


Do Lafzon Main Ye Bayaan Na Ho Paye

by AvaCelt



Series: 2020 Bollywood Prompt Fills [1]
Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, F/M, Inspired by Bollywood, M/M, Old gay people, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, Reunions, The what if fic where Secre lives forever but no one else does, background AsuYuno and Rillmy, some old straight people, surprise homosexuals also cameo’ing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt
Summary: The decades go by, and the seasons change, but Secre Swallowtail remains the same. [Secre/Lumiere, Parental!Secre & Asta, post-canon]
Relationships: Asta/Yuno (Black Clover), Lemiel Silvamillion Clover/Secre Swallowtail | Nero, Rill Boismortier/Charmy Pappitson
Series: 2020 Bollywood Prompt Fills [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1969198
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29
Collections: IAmStoryteller's Best of Black Clover Fic Rec





	Do Lafzon Main Ye Bayaan Na Ho Paye

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are from the song, _Teri Meri_ , from the Bollywood film, **Bodyguard**. The title roughly translates to, "this can't be explained in two words."

Time moved differently with Secre Swallowtail. She hadn't physically aged after being cursed into a antibird, but once she'd regained her body, the crow's feet came as naturally as the longer hair. She still had the ability to transform into an antibird, and had, after retiring from the Black Bulls and leaving Clover Kingdom, chosen to remain a bird for small periods of time. It was easier to travel in her inhuman form. She could eat from the land, and contemplate in privacy.

There were downsides, of course. If she spent too long as an antibird, returning to her human form could mean spending a full day chopping off the overgrown locks, clipping her nails, and trimming the rest of her body hair. Even though she looked largely the same as she did six hundred years ago, the cells in her body continued to regenerate a bounty of beautiful black hair, and glowing skin.

But Secre disliked long hair, and she disliked pretending even more, so she chopped, clipped, and trimmed the years away.

* * *

She'd retired from the Black Bulls seven years after the invasion of the Spade Kingdom, and left Clover Kingdom after Asta died peacefully in his sleep at the tender age of ninety-four. The Spade boy he'd married decades earlier had passed away the year before, and Secre had known that it was only time before Asta went to sleep one night and didn't wake up again. The wails from his grown children began while Secre laid flowers on the ageless skull still standing on the outskirts of the village. She, of course, had known he'd passed the night before, but she didn't think it appropriate to wake the whole house at three in the morning just for that. Asta would have hated it.

He was laid to rest next to his husband, the Spade boy who never took up his princely crown, a boy who became a man, and then an _old_ man who passed away from a heart attack in the middle of game of chess Asta was losing miserably.

Asta had cried about the boy being dramatic until the very end, and the wind spirit wept with him, wailing and begging for her Yuno to come back, to take the stinky shorty instead, and Asta cried with her because the Spade boy had meant everything to them, had meant everything to Asta.

She left identical white flowers on all three graves before she flew away – the bleached skull that still stood sentry after all these centuries, and the two graves of the two orphans who went on to become the greatest leaders Clover Kingdom had ever seen.

* * *

In a way, Lumiere hadn't been wrong. The world was cruel, even unbearable at times, but it still had its merits.

She met new people along the way, ones who sometimes asked too many questions, and some who didn't even say hello, merely passed her a plate of food and turned their attention back to their book, their own food, and once, a window looking out towards a bleached sky and golden fields. It was the kind of peace Secre hadn't ever experienced before, the peace of anonymity, of mutual respect for life, of living and letting live.

With Asta, there had never been a moment of silence. Secre was an observer more than she was a participant. Zagred had thought her foolish for that, and had been sealed away for his arrogance. She was a watcher, a recorder, someone who existed on the fringes of a memory that had long since faded away.

She was a hateful woman, too. No god of any religion would ever forgive her for making the decision to use a poor, magicless child for her own ends. She'd manipulated his despair and his longing, and she'd used it to her advantage. She'd used Asta – and she'd paid for it by losing Lumiere forever.

Secre had made many mistakes in her life, but never one as egregious as that one. That's why she had to atone – that's why she had to stay by his side until he'd perished peacefully.

She still bled, even if the blood was viscous black instead of smooth red. Lumiere had forgiven her for her transgressions, of course, but Lumiere forgave everything, even the genocide of his own brother-in-law's tribe, because Lumiere was barely a person even when he was alive. He'd always been god-like in her eyes, and perhaps that's why she'd been punished, because Lumiere _had_ been human, he'd just been too kind, too dumb, too full of faith for his own good.

And then there was Secre – five hundred years as a bird, and she'd latched onto the first child that reminded her of a dead dream. She wasn't afraid to admit it anymore, of course. She hadn't just chosen Asta because he'd looked useful, but because he'd also looked the way she'd imagined her son would, because Secre was just as bad as Lumiere, had dreamed big dreams, and then lost everything in the process.

A woman who loved a man she couldn't have, and desired to bear children the man would never have given her – that was the unfortunate tragedy of one Secre Swallowtail. Secre had told Yami Sukehiro her story once, and he'd laughed at her, because who the hell cried over spilled milk?

Who, indeed.

Ten years after Asta passed away, she climbed aboard a ship and left the continent.

* * *

The decades went by, and her names changed. She continued to chop away at the black locks, and kept her nails trimmed and her wardrobe full of muted colors. She didn't return to the continent until a hundred years had passed, once the dragons had returned and the spirits of the sun and sky had finally awoken, and once the dwarves had returned from the deepest parts of the forests. By the time her wings touched the skies above her home continent, a second moon had appeared in the sky, and the elves of the other continents had deemed her continent safe again.

Kings had come and gone, but the great forest remained a deep green. The skull was still bone bleached white by the sun, but now there were more buildings in Hage, and dwarves who traded pelts for tatoes, and children of mixed heritage who didn't have to live in the forests of the Neutral Zone for fear of persecution.

Asta and Yuno's children's children had born and raised their own children, and now _their_ grandchildren ran the farms, and even the schools, and maybe, just maybe she'd encountered one boy with deep red hair who reminded her a little of the Spade boy who'd sobbed freely on his wedding day to her son, her Asta. Names changed, but maybe souls didn't. Maybe souls always remained, maybe the souls of Asta and Yuno were in every single person inhabiting the bustling village that was no longer a village, maybe even the dwarves who'd emerged from the great forest had felt these souls, the souls of the wizard kings who'd married in front of the whole country and led their kingdom into the future.

“Well, well, well – if it isn't little miss songbird herself.”

Secre turned around to face the demon who hadn't made a sound at Asta's funeral, the demon who now walked freely with its black and white skin, and eyes as bloody red as the rubies that used to adorn Lumiere's crown.

“You're still here.”

“Where else would I be?”

Secre didn't answer him, instead turned back to the human and dwarf children squealing and running around a pen full of clucking chickens, daring each other to pet one of the creatures. She'd never experienced this kind of peace, because she hadn't been raised with love and freedom to breathe. She was born to serve, and serve she did until there was no one left to serve.

“That one,” the Anti-Magic Demon pointed to a short, pretty woman with hair as blue as the sky, “is the dwarf girl's daughter with that crazy human that used to paint pictures of everything. The dwarves can live almost as long as us, you know. The old bat is still around here somewhere, but she mostly stays inside now.”

“What are _you_ still doing here? You got what you wanted, remember?”

The Anti-Magic Demon bristled, but didn't budge. “I'm here cuz I wanna be here – why are _you_ back?”

Secre shrugged. “No reason, seemed like as good a time as any.”

Finally the demon went quiet, and Secre exhaled.

* * *

Before she'd left, she'd blessed Asta and Yuno's grandchildren with small kisses on top of their little foreheads. She didn't have much money to her name, but she had Lumiere's jewels, old and dull, but still good enough for a pawn shop or a merchant. She'd left them to Asta and Yuno's children before she'd left, and now that she'd returned, she'd expected them to have already paid for someone's wedding, maybe even a house. Instead, Secre found the jewels encrusted into busts of Lumiere, Asta, Yuno, and herself.

Secre stared at her doppelganger, unblinking.

“Is that yer mumma,” Secre heard a loud, squeaky voice say. Secre ignored the voice, and continued to stare at the busts.

“Oi! Old lady! Don't ignore me!”

Secre turned her head in a flash, because she was still inhuman, still two steps from becoming a demon like the Anti-Magic Demon and Zagred, and she was mad, she was horrible, and she just wanted to be left alone.

But the little boy with fat cheeks and stocky legs had other plans for her.

“Don't ignore me, Old Lady!” He fumed. Secre balked at the feisty little child, barely two feet tall.

“Don't bother the nice lady,” called a pretty voice, and it was a voice Secre hadn't heard in almost two hundred years, so she whipped around to face her demon, the demon impersonating _his_ voice.

“Pappy, the old lady is a ghost!” The boy squealed, half horror and half amazement etched on his face as his father plucked him off the ground and into his arms.

“That's not very nice,” said a short man with thick frames, dusky colored skin, _and Lumiere's voice_.

“Oh my god,” the man gushed in awe, and Secre was barely five feet tall, but she had at least half a foot on the dwarf man, the man who had Lumiere's voice, and Lumiere's aura, and his beautiful, glowing smile.

“Pappy, ghost!” The little boy complained again, and Secre wished she could just disappear, maybe she _should_ disappear, because the more she stared, the more the little boy looked too much like Asta, was _too loud_ , and there was a dwarf with Lumiere's soul standing in front of her, and Secre had wished she'd stayed away, _far_ away.

“Are you the esteemed Miss Nero?” The man began again. “Oh my god, you _are_ her! They said you'd return, but no one knew when! My students at the school, they play games with the antibirds, pretending one of them is you! It _is_ you! I can't believe it! We thought you'd never come home! Have you met the Sister at the church? We've been waiting for you! It's really you!!!”

And Secre drowned, drowned in the liquid gold eyes, drowned in the the beautiful smile, the beautiful _voice_ of the dwarf who'd inherited Lumiere's soul.

* * *

“Well, now you _have_ to stay. Can't sleep with a single man who's just tryna raise his baby in these trying times – if yer gonna taste the forbidden fruit, then _commit_.”

“Should I be hearing that from you?” Secre snapped back at the demon lounging on a bed of flowers.

“I'm just sayin', little songbird – when you get to _my_ age, you see it all. You _want_ it all, so why not take it?”

“Because they're dead,” Secre concluded. “A moment of weakness doesn't need to turn into a lifetime of regret.”

“Who said you needa regret anything? He loves you, and his kid calls you Ghost Mommy when he thinks you're not listening.”

Secre flinched, because it's true, because she overstayed her welcome, because she gave false hope to a man who's now hopelessly in love with her.

“Don't think of it as use, and be used,” the Anti Magic Demon chuckled harshly, as if reading her mind. “He had a choice too – to choose to ignore you, and to move on with his life, but the minute he saw you, he fell in love. You wanna say no, then say no, but remember – he _chose_ to be with you, and you chose to be with _him_.”

“Is it them?” Secre whispered.

“Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter?”

“Secre! Secre, are you out there? Dinner's ready!” Called a voice from far away.

“Lumiere couldn't cook for his life,” she whispered hollowly, wiping tears from her cold cheeks.

“And the little brat never disrespected a woman in his life, but the second that little punk saw you, he called you a crusty little ghost. How's that for a reincarnation?”

“Bird Lady, dinner is ready!” The little boy with the fat cheeks and stumpy little legs screeched louder than Asta ever did, and she cried, she cried because she missed her Lumiere, and she missed the magicless little boy she grew to care for like a son.

“See, little songbird,” the Anti-Magic Demon whispered, sliding closer, so close that he was mere inches from her crying face, its own eyes hollow and cold and lonely, “after a while, it doesn't matter anymore. After a while, we die too, and death – it's a cold, lonely affair. You got nothing to lose.”

“Bird lady?” The little boy called hesitantly, staying some feet back, because the Anti-Magic Demon was the village watcher, the wraith that simultaneously protected and scared the living daylights out of the creatures living in Hage.

Secre wiped the tears from her face and climbed to her feet. “I'll be right there,” she called back, and the little boy nodded once before shooting back to the little house they called home.

“You found your home,” Secre surmised.

The Anti-Magic Demon hummed in response, laying back against the flowers, eyes fixed on the twin moons in the sky.

“Home,” Secre repeated to herself as she made her way back to her little house with her two little dwarves.

It seemed she'd finally found one as well.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> For all my Hadestown fans, Anti Magic Demon calling Secre "little songbird" is absolutely homage to _Hey, Little Songbird_ because I still firmly believe El Demonio was supposed to be a dumber version of Hades. *3*


End file.
